Time but ive been sick with pneumonia. Not quite able to duty, expect to be able by monday to resume work. We are laying still here, and no prospect for an advance on the enemy. Our men are about half that for duty. This is the unhealthiest camp i have ever seen. Western virginia, no comparison to it. You see a soldier and an officer writing home during the war, and the war that he enlisted in. He was not drafted, but it just gives a good historical account of the things that they faced, the obstacles and triumphs that they have. But it was a hard life. A lot of people dont realize that the casualties in the civil war were not battle wounds. It was illness, sickness. And he certainly experienced debt. In the rights throughout the war, im not feeling well. At one point they had to carry him by ambulance, and its obvious from some of these bad when he was in the middle of some of the hardest fighting, he was sick and he was able to still lead his men. And s s that battle was over, apparently he would collapse and he was taken to hospital where he would recover or go home to recover. One thing that i think is a significant in his career, in the fall of 1862, he was sent when he was home in india gathering troops, he was taking them back to the battlefield and was diverted to a little town in western kentucky. Because the confederate general Braxton Bragg was heading north, and he was to go there and wait for the full union troops that was going to be there for a pretty big battle. But he went up there with just a couple hundred troops and got completely surrounded by the Confederate Army of about 50,000. He held them all for several days waiting for the union troops that never came, the union army that never came. Eventually negotiated a surrender by i dont know if this is ever been done in warfare before, he went in under a flag of truce to the confederate camp and sought out the confederate officer he understood was a gentleman, and asked for his advice. Im sure he played something to the effect of on not a militarily trained, what should an officer do in a situation . Was pretty much told not to surrender, but you say you have surrounded me with 50,000 men to my couple, maybe 500, can i see proof that the army is as big as it is . And this officer said, sir, this is not how wars are fought. Later in his memoir he wrote i took an instant liking to this man and wouldnt have come into, led him astray for anything. So they gave him a tour of the Confederate Army and saw that, you know, he was outnumbered. At that point, wilder and negotiated a surrender were sure he negotiated with his men were not imprisoned but sent home. Like i said earlier, he was sent home, at about two or three months later the union army worked out and exchange where he could come back in, and im sure the confederate got somebody in exchange for him. But i thought it was just a very unique approach to every desk that situation, when he was left hanging out to dry and he was able to hold off an army that outnumbered is probably 100 to one if not 1001, for several days. For more information on booktvs recent visit to chattanooga, tennessee, and the many of the cities visited by local content vehicles, go to cspan. Org localcontent. Joseph cirincione talks about the possibility of Nuclear Weapons being used today. He says that the decline in the number of Nuclear Weapons since the 1960s should leave is hopeful that they can be eliminated entirely in the future. This is a little under one hour. Thank you very much for that very kind and generous introduction. Its a pleasure to be with you today. I have to say, im honored to serve on secretary kerrys International SecurityAdvisory Board of the comments to give are purely my own and do not represent the views of the board, at the state department or of the u. S. Government. Im delighted to see so many students here, maybe some of you here have read some of my articles but i would guess that very few of you other than the two who have seen my video clip on a cold their report. When i go speak at a school thats primarily how they know me. Ive given hundreds of hindus in my life and the one with Stephen Colbert was by far the most difficult. Ive never met anybody as smart as he is, quick thinking. As result if you google cold their nuclear, you give me. Cold their nuclear. I show up on the google site. Im the president of ploughshares fund. We are a foundation that focuses solely on Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Weapons policy. We, for 32 years now, weve been raising funds and finding the best people with the smartest ideas around the world on how to reduce the Nuclear Threats. The Public Foundation relies on the foundations of generous donors. So if any of you either have money or need money, please see me after this caucus. Im here today because ive written a new book called Nuclear Nightmares. We built a special website for called Nuclear Nightmares nuclearnightmaresbook. Com which gives you some idea of what the book is about. It helps explore the main themes of the book and you can go up to the website and track the other events ill be doing around the country were see some of the articles ive written. Wenwent out like you did is give you a brief overview of what this book is about, the threats we face today. And i want to particularly focus, probably spend about half the talk on the subject of iran. I think its something all of us want to talk about at this point. Its a news and it is probably the most pressing Nuclear Challenge that we face. I would guess that very few of you woke up this morning thinking about Nuclear Weapons. You know, why would you . Most people think of Nuclear Weapons as a left over from the cold war, the weapons that dont have much to do with our current security challenges. If you think of them at all, you think of them probably insurance of iran, and you may believe that the threat they represented are things of the past or that we have programs in place that can deal with these threats. You would be dead wrong. Its understandable that we dont think about these weapons anymore. We are confronted every day with formidable challenges in our personal lives, in our family, in our schools, in our community or state. But of all the threats and problems we face every day, there really are only two that threatened devastation on a planetary scale. And thats Global Warming and Nuclear Weapons. Both of these can affect our lives in unprecedented ways. Both of these threaten a dramatic change if the worst should happen in the way we live in a very question of whether we can continue to live. Both of these are caused by machines that we invented. Both of these threats are preventable, even reversible, but they require new ways of thinking and newbold, government leaders to put policies into place. Im going to talk today about the Nuclear Threats that we face. We ignore these threats at our peril. If you think of somebody else is taking care of this or that we dont have to worry about this, think again, think again. The risk of a Nuclear Accident or the use of a Nuclear Weapon is low, but should a Nuclear Weapon be used again in the world it would have devastating physical, financial and medical impact. Theres generally three categories of threats we worry about. The National Security strategy of the United States says that the greatest threat the United States itself faces today is from Nuclear Weapons. Specifically, the risk that a terrorist group might get a Nuclear Weapon and use it on a u. S. City. A nuclear 9 11. Theres also the risk of new states acquiring these weapons, perhaps states of less restraint on use of these weapons and might use them in a regional conflict or to threaten the United States. In this case we often think of iran, which does not yet have a Nuclear Weapon but is building the technological capability to develop a weapon, and north korea which just in the past 10 years has conducted three Nuclear Tests and is on the verge of consolidating the Nuclear Weapons state. For this reason the national street strategy says this has got to be our top rudy. I have to admit the policies of the United States have not matched that announces. The United States itself does not focus that much attention on these three threats. The president of the United States try to change it when he came into office the president obama came into office having worked in the senate on Nuclear Policy. One of the first things he did was speak out to senator lugar and asked them to take him along when he went to the former states of the soviet union to watch how Government Programs were helping to control and contain and eliminate the threat of the leftover Nuclear Weapons, the leftover Nuclear Material that resulted in the soviet union collapsed. Obama was deeply affected by that, and started to adopt as innocent as one of his primary causes. He also worked with republican senator chuck hagel to fashion some of the most comprehensive nonproliferation legislation ever presented in the u. S. Senate. And that relationship as you can see continues today with secretary hagel being his secretary with senator hagel being his secretary of defense and Richard Lugar still a close confidant to the president. In fact, president obama focused on Nuclear Policy in his very first National Security address in prague in april 2009. And there he laid out the vision of a World WithoutNuclear Weapons. The idea that we should move step by step to eliminate these weapons, and he married that vision up with a series of practical measures to address the various aspects of the nuclear threat. The first with two i mentioned. He said we have to redouble our efforts to secure all Nuclear Materials around the world. The good news is that a terrorist can build a Nuclear Weapon from scratch. They dont have the facility, the infrastructure to build the material, the highly enriched uranium, plutonium of a bomb. It takes an industrial facility, billions of dollars, gigawatts of energy to make that material. This should be Hillary Clinton next book, it takes a nation to build Nuclear Material. If a terrorist can get that material, its been a relatively easy step to construct it into a Nuclear Device come easier still to smuggle it into the country and, of course, theres a shortage of suicide bombers willing to detonate it. President obama pledged to bring together World Leaders to tighten up the security around the north side files and to eliminate that wherever possib possible. This developed into what he called Nuclear Security summit which continues to this day, a new pillar in our nonproliferation efforts, a new level of unified International Efforts to secure Nuclear Material to prevent that nuclear terrorism. In addition, the president laid out new efforts to prevent new states in getting these weapons. He specifically focus on north korea and iran, and the actions he then took in fact built on efforts of the Bush Administration to build up International Sanctions and restrictions on iran. As a result we now have today the toughest sanctions on iran that if ever been imposed on any country in peacetime. Its a result of this International Cooperation, the patient work of diplomacy that is tightening the noose on iran that is brought iran to the bargaining table in geneva. The third platform, third element of the president s agenda was reducing our existing Nuclear Arsenal. This is something we actually dont think that much about. We used to have 30,000 Nuclear Weapons in the u. S. Arsenal. Back in the height of the cold war of the 1980s. That number is reduced to about 8000, about 5000 any active stockpile. We normally dont think these weapons as part of a threat but they are. Theyre a threat in two ways. One, as long as we maintain huge arsenals of Nuclear Weapons, we are giving an incentive to other countries to build up their own arsenal, the other eight states that have weapons, or perhaps acquire them if they are so valuable, so essential for u. S. National security, they must have security value or other weaker nations. So theres relationship long recognized between existing arsenals and the spread of these weapons. Theres another danger that they represent and thats the danger of accidental use or miscalculation. Let me give you just two quick examples. In 2007, a b52 bomber was on a routine mission flying on the miner air force base in north dakota carrying six cruise missiles on its wings, cruise missiles that they were flying to Barksdale Air force base in louisiana for destruction. To eliminate these missiles are being put out of commission. They accidentally loaded not conventional cruise missiles on obama but Nuclear Armed cruise missiles on the bomber. There were seven different safety checks fisher prevented this. They were all broken. The crew didnt know they were loaded on. Up high that didnt know they were there. That plane flew down to Barksdale Air force base and spent the night on the tarmac guarded by just the normal security of a guard and a barbed wire fence. It wasnt until the next day that a crew member looking out noticed on the cone, the nose cone of these cruise missiles that there was a red dot that signified is a nuclear warhead, not a conventional warhead. He went to his command and his commanding believing. Finally, they realized what a series mistake had been made. The really bad news is up in minot, they never knew they were missing until they got the call from barksdale. A colleague of mine, former commander of the Strategic Air command said i he would ask and before whether this was possible, he would have said absolutely not. But this is the kind of accident that can happen with Nuclear Weapons. If this kind of thing can happen in the United States, where we have the best command and control system in the world, whats happening in russia . Whats happening in pakistan, a country with 100 Nuclear Weapons, unstable government, a collapsing economy, strong fundamentalist influences in its military. Oh, al qaeda operating inside its national territory, and an ongoing conflict with Nuclear Armed neighbor india. The risk of accident or miscalculation or collapse of security that could allow terrorists to get these weapons is a real and present danger. But it gets even worse. In 1995, the government of norway was firing off a whether rocket, a routine whether rocket that could take at material testing. But when Russian Military forces detected this rocket, it looked at him like he was the u. S. Launched submarinebased Nuclear Armed missile, and they interpreted it as the first wave of an attack. And the fact under some attacks in there, thats exactly how it would start, a single missile coming across detonating a nuke weapon to blind russias radar, followed by a salvo of u. S. Weapons. They alerted president Boris Yeltsin, leader of russia at that time, and for the first time in history, opened up the nuclear football, thats the case that follows the president of United States and president of russia around with the command and control buttons to launch the Nuclear Arsenal of either country. They told Boris Yeltsin that russia was under attack and he should launch the Nuclear Missiles. Fortunately, yeltsin wasnt drunk. He didnt believe what he was being told. He waited for more information, and they waited and waited and it became clear that was not an attack. They closed the football. We dodged a nuclear bullet. A very Large Nuclear bullet. This kind of misunderstanding happened at a time of actual relations between u. S. And russia. What would happen now over in some future scenario when th